Less than a week until I officially start Officially reading for this challenge. I say "officially" because I have been reading a few bits of Pratchett errata in the last few months. I picked up A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction and A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction and between the two got an interesting look into his life and writings outside of the Disc. I'm extremely interested now in picking up some of his more traditionally Sci-Fi pieces, especially The Long Earth series he wrote with Stephen Baxter.
I also recently read his biography, Terry Pratchett: A life with Footnotes written by his long time assistant Rob Wilkins. Some things were not as new to me thanks to the previous collections I had read, but when I hit the last quarter of the book, after his diagnosis, I was unable to stop reading, and found myself staying up Far Too Late while ugly-crying. Thank goodness I did it in the privacy of my home as opposed to on public transportation on my way to work. Sobbing into a mask is extremely unpleasant. Trust me.
Look, I am unable to explain why the loss of this man to Alzheimer's makes me as sad and mad as it does, but it does. I get choked up talking about it with people. (Yes, I have set myself up for failure by doing a reading challenge that will have me frequently talking about my favorite author and how important he was to me. For an entire year. If you consider crying in public failure.) The man approached writing with a relentless vigor, and its unfair that he was taken so cruelly, and so early, when he could have given all of us so much more.
I'm looking forward to reading thru the books again, and watching him and his skills grow as he pulls the Discworld out of his mind, one word, one page, one book at a time.
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